


Sentence

by Lassarina



Series: 2017 Sev and Rina Prompt Extravaganza [15]
Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Gen, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11794518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/pseuds/Lassarina
Summary: Seifer turns himself in at the end of the Sorceress War; his sentence is not what he expects.





	Sentence

Squall was honestly surprised that it had come to this so quickly. It seemed he hadn't been foolish to review and execute his contingency plan as soon as he assumed command of Garden, after all.

Seifer stood in front of him, hip cocked and jaw jutting out in a typically arrogant stance, and a familiar sneer on his face. "Guess you better call those kids downstairs," he said. "That's what you do when you arrest people, right? Chain 'em up and send 'em off to D-District under guard?"

"I wouldn't know, Seifer." He kept his voice even even as his nerves twitched at the mention of that place. Trust Seifer to bring that up.

Seifer seemed nonplussed by that answer, enough that his pose collapsed in on itself, and he stood up straight. "Yeah, well, I'm turning myself in," he said.

"SeeD isn't the police," he said.

"Yeah, but it's SeeD that puts down the sorceress." Seifer shrugged before he seemed to remember that he meant to swagger, and then straightened. "Figured that extends to the knight, too."

He and Quistis and Xu had spent hours calculating the actions that Seifer might take now that Ultimecia was defeated and Garden was under Squall's command. He'd have to tell Xu that Quistis had won the informal pool—in which, as Commander, he had declined to participate—on what Seifer would do. "So, what, you're here for a duel to the death?"

"How'd you make Commander being that dumb?" Seifer demanded. It still didn't take much to prick his temper; some things never changed. "I know the Garden Code and I know I broke laws of at least three nations. Figured I'd save you the trouble of coming to find me."

Squall caught himself before he made the slashing gesture with his right hand that Quistis insisted made the new recruits nervous. Seifer would just take it as an invitation. "It's not like you to give up," he said.

Seifer muttered an oath that was most definitely not allowed under Section VI, Subsection 7, paragraph B of Garden Code. "I fucked up, all right?" He didn't look at Squall, staring instead at the case behind him where Lionheart was locked away because he needed his weapon at hand and Xu insisted that showing it off made for a good impression. "I'm not stupid. I can spend my life running or I can face up." Now he did look at Squall, his eyes shadowed by too little sleep and likely the same nightmares of time compression that drove Squall to the training center at 0300 while Rinoa slept fitfully. Squall didn't like that point of similarity, but he acknowledged it. "You gonna pretend anybody was ever gonna let me walk away?" Seifer demanded.

"No." Squall kept his hands flat on the desk even though he wanted to bury his face in his hands. "But don't you think turning yourself in is a little too easy?"

 _That_ got his attention. "What, you thought prison was a picnic?" He was trying hard to sneer, but there was—at last—true nervousness under it. Seifer had always covered that with swagger.

"I think you're trading one box for another." Now Squall sat back, remembering the lectures Kiros had given him about seeming to be in control even when he wasn't. "Turn yourself in, and you don't have to really take ownership, because we're the ones punishing you. Still the Knight, suffering for his Sorceress." Hours spent with Dr. Kadowaki, tracing out all the different paths he could take and what the reactions would be, had paid off. Seifer flinched and wasn't fast enough to cover it.

He jerked his chin up instead, trying to use those extra inches of height. "You got a lot of nerve saying that, Leonhart, when you're a Knight too. Think I can't see it on you, see it between you and her?"

It was pointless to wish this command post had gone to Quistis or anyone else, anyone at all better suited to it than him. Squall was tempted anyway. "I didn't say being the Knight was the box." Though it was, and he and Rinoa still hadn't really talked about it, which was a problem for another day, no matter how much Kadowaki pushed. "I said you don't have to make hard choices when you let a punishment happen to you."

Seifer shoved his hands through his hair. "If you're not gonna kill me and you're not gonna arrest me, then what am I doing here?"

He'd scripted this out a dozen ways with Quistis, Xu, and Kadowaki, and now he threw all of those ideas aside, because at the end of the day, they still didn't know Seifer the same way as someone who'd fought him for years, made him bleed, left his mark. "Well, I was going to offer you a job, but I guess the SeeD exam's just too hard for you, as you showed several times."

Seifer's mouth worked silently. Squall lip-read at least eight more words banned under Section VI, Subsection 7, Paragraph B of the Garden Code before Seifer marshaled his voice to answer. "A job? You're out of your mind."

"We need someone who can teach candidates how to resist a Sorceress bent on using them," Squall said. "You have first-hand experience, and there's no better teacher. Of course, you'd have to pass the field exam, and there would be other restrictions, given."

"Given," Seifer repeated. Then he laughed, a bitter and empty sound. "Didn't figure you for that devious."

That was exactly why he'd argued for hours with Quistis and Xu and Kadowaki about why Seifer shouldn't be executed—not out of fondness or a particular desire to give a second chance, but because he knew that incarceration and execution were the easy ways out. This, he'd have to work for, and Squall was honest enough to know that he was looking forward to watching Seifer struggle with it, seeing if he could stick with the agreement. "If you screw up, you'll still go to prison," he said.

Seifer thought about it. "Yeah," he said after a while. "Fine. Where do I start?"

"Xu's office is downstairs, first on the left. She'll assign you your dorm. Circumstances being what they are, the time limit for passing the exam's been extended, but you'll only get one shot at this." The _more_ hung silent between them. "You don't do it this time, you go to prison. Xu has the rest of the details and I've got work to do, cadet."

Seifer snapped into a salute without seeming to realize he was doing it, then sneered and turned away.

Squall's phone rang as soon as the elevator departed, and he saw Matron's name on the plate. "Leonhart."

"Did he accept?" Matron's voice was very controlled, but he knew she'd have her hand twisted in her hair, as she had when she'd brought the idea to him.

"Yeah."

Her sigh of relief was almost a sob. "Thank you, Squall."

He hung up without saying anything more, and noted in the commander's log that Cadet Almasy had accepted his sentence for his actions during the Sorceress War.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "choice A, choice B, and the unexpected choice C."


End file.
